Malware such as viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware, spyware, adware and other malicious software is becoming an increasingly costly part of doing business using computer networks. Cybercrime damage is predicted to grow from three trillion dollars in costs in 2015 to six trillion dollars annually by 2021 (see, e.g., CSO Security Business Report, Jun. 15, 2017). Panda Labs™ reported capturing eighteen million new malware samples in the third quarter of 2016 alone, for an average of 200,000 new malware samples a day. According to a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (June 2016), about 4,000 ransomware attacks occurred per day in 2016. Kaspersky™ reported a rise in ransomware attacks between January of 2016 to September 2016 from once every two minutes to once every 40 seconds. Phishing emails including ransomware grew by over 97% during the third quarter of 2016 (PhishMe™ 2016 Q3 Malware Review). As such, the importance of associates of an enterprise understanding the threat of malicious emails is ever increasing. Nonetheless, even users who claim to know the risks of unknown links in emails, click on the links in the emails they receive (Z. Benenson, Friedrich-Alexander University).
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide apparatus and methods for preventing infiltration of an enterprise by malicious emails. It would also be desirable to provide apparatus and methods for efficiently determining which emails submitted for review pose a threat and which are benign. It would further be desirable to provide apparatus and methods for instructing enterprise associates regarding detecting and appropriately responding to potentially malicious emails.